11.2.10

Reproduction - Painting Of Mona Lisa Rolling Of Printing Press

A picture can say a thousand words, but a thousand pictures just might say nothing at all. On todays painting you see a reproduction of Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa rolling of a printing press. Needless to say Mona Lisa is one of worlds most famous paintings and a real icon in its own right.

Few other works of art have been subject to as much scrutiny and parody as Mona Lisa. I feel this deprived the painting much of its meaning. It has been used over and over again. By showing a reproduction of the Mona Lisa on a printing press I stress this point, but I'm guilty of the doing the same thing of course.

The painting raises questions about authencity as well. In a way it's a bit like Richard Prince's series of works for which he re-photographed old Marlboro advertisements and claimed them to be his own, but my painting might take things even a little further.

You see, first of all the painting on my painting is a reproduction, somebody already copied it before I did. But it doesn't stop there, to make things more confusing the image is a filmstill from Robert Hughes' documentary Mona Lisa Curse. I used that as reference for my own work. So you could say it's a copy of a copy of a copy if I'm not mistaken. I wasn't lying when I said the Mona Lisa has been used over and over again. Anyway in the end, much like Richard Prince claimed, it's of course my painting, every stroke I paintstakingly did myself and nobody else.

I think I need a lighter subject to paint now, maybe some potatoes or something.